I’m a fan

Saturday, October 6th was the Yokohama Octoberfest, International Food Festival, and a city-wide Jazz Festival. The Jazz Fest consisted of various bands playing at outdoor spaces throughout the downtown area. One choral group sang an offensively vanilla version of “When the Saints Go Marching in.” Another group, a brass/electric bass ensemble, played a passable fusion improv.

The Octoberfest and Food Festival were held separately at either end of the long waterfront, from the Red Brick Warehouse compound to the Chinatown end of Yamashita Park. One could walk between them in 20 minutes. Sunny day, some pretty good Indian curries, a sad little bowl of nachos, and an excellent roasted chicken dish at the French tent. Some lovely beers and awesome people watching opportunities.

Sunday, October 7th was our 14th wedding anniversary. We conspicuously consumed at the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo. It was lovely and romantic and ohmylord the service is great. If you are ever in the area, go to the 38th floor lobby and use the restrooms just for the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

We had dinner that night in Ebisu at a tiny little French Belgian restaurant, A Ta Gueule. More to come on that amazing dinner, which included some moaning as the waiter shaved black truffles over my potage…

View of Nihonbashi from the hotel room.

View from the tub. Some day the proletariat will rise up and kill us all.

Some Veblen, because it’s possible to enjoy high-thread counts and down duvets, while remaining aloof and bemused by the spectacle of one’s folly:

This growth of punctilious discrimination as to qualitative excellence in eating, drinking, etc. presently affects not only the manner of life, but also the training and intellectual activity of the gentleman of leisure. He is no longer simply the successful, aggressive male, — the man of strength, resource, and intrepidity. In order to avoid stultification he must also cultivate his tastes, for it now becomes incumbent on him to discriminate with some nicety between the noble and the ignoble in consumable goods. He becomes a connoisseur in creditable viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dancers, and the narcotics. This cultivation of aesthetic faculty requires time and application, and the demands made upon the gentleman in this direction therefore tend to change his life of leisure into a more or less arduous application to the business of learning how to live a life of ostensible leisure in a becoming way. Closely related to the requirement that the gentleman must consume freely and of the right kind of goods, there is the requirement that he must know how to consume them in a seemly manner.